INJECTING ROOM – FAILURE ON MAJOR OBJECTIVES WHILE INCREASING CRIME 

 

 INJECTING ROOM – FAILURE ON MAJOR OBJECTIVES WHILE INCREASING CRIME 

(what the recent injecting room review actually said) 

The recently released review of the North Richmond Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) evaluated the performance of the facility against its six legislated objectives, with the review’s own data and comments demonstrating failure on five of the six objectives, despite rosier media reports indicating otherwise.  The facility has also been associated with increases in drug-related crime.

The review records the following regarding its six objectives:

• Reduce discarded needles on streets – “Local people record no difference in seeing discarded injecting equipment” (p 76 of the review)
• Improve public amenity – “significantly fewer residents and business respondents reported feeling safe walking alone during the day and after dark due to concerns about violence and crime . . . “ (p 85).  DFA notes that the review’s cited (small) reductions in reported sightings of public injecting (p xx) are clearly countered by increases in publicly discarded injecting equipment (p xx) which inevitably indicates increased public injecting.  Policing crackdowns during daytime increased night-time injecting (p 71), when public injecting is less likely to be observed by local residents or businesses.
• Reduce the spread of blood-borne viruses – “There is not a significant difference between MSIR service users and other people who inject drugs in reporting that they had injected with someone’s used needle/syringe in the previous month.” (p 100)
• Referrals to treatment and other services – “in the first year of operation (the MSIR) has not demonstrated higher levels of service take-up for MSIR users as compared with other people who use drugs.” (p 48).
• Reduce heroin deaths – Figure 17 on p 45 of the review shows that there were 12 heroin deaths within 1 km of the MSIR the year before it opened, and 13 the year after.  Figure 19 on p 47 shows that for the top 5 Local Government Areas for heroin deaths in Melbourne there was a cumulative 65 deaths before the MSIR opened and 67 in its first year. Clearly there is no observable reduction in heroin deaths in Melbourne or North Richmond in its first year of operation.  Furthermore, had the 112,831 heroin injections in the MSIR over 18 months happened on the streets of North Richmond, there would, according to Australian statistics, have been only one death to be expected, indicating that the MSIR spent $6 million to save only one life, an extremely expensive failure.
• Reduce ambulance and hospital attendances – On the streets of Melbourne, 112,831 opiate injections would have produced 26 overdoses, (25 non-fatal and 1 fatal) according to an important Australian study (see p 59).  Of these 19 would likely have been attended by an ambulance.  Comparing 18 months before and after, the MSIR would therefore have reduced ambulance callouts by just 5%.  Yet the review egregiously claims reductions of 36%, which were clearly due to heightened police operations arresting drug dealers in the vicinity of the MSIR, sending drug dealers elsewhere to ply their trade.  Because users most often overdose near where they bought their drugs (p 83), ambulance callouts were clearly the result of policing, which nullifies (see footnote on p 67) the review’s spurious claims regarding callouts.  Additionally, analysis of heroin OD presentations at nearby St Vincent’s Hospital “found that the number of heroin overdose cases did not change significantly after the facility opened.” (p 74)

Adding to the failure against objectives listed above, police complained of increasing crime around the MSIR, and residents of a honey-pot effect where drug dealers were drawn to the streets outside the MSIR.

Drug Free Australia will call on Premiers Andrews and Berejiklian to explain to the public why their respective injecting rooms, which are clearly accessory to local drug trades, should receive any further funding.  99% of Australians, according to the largest Australian drug survey, do not approve heroin use.

Gary Christian

RESEARCH DIRECTOR

Drug Free Australia

0422 163 141